Mounds of Mollusks: A Preliminary Report of the Zooarchaeological Assemblage Recovered from the Slave/post-Emancipation Laborers’ Quarters at Betty’s Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies

Summary

Betty’s Hope plantation operated continuously for nearly 300 years during the colonial period in Antigua, West Indies. Since 2007, excavations have been conducted on several parts of the site including the Great House, Service Quarters, and Still House contexts. Zooarchaeological analyses have begun to untangle the foodways patterns in daily life at Betty’s Hope, particularly the incorporation of local resources with specific class-based patterns despite the general disdain the English supposedly had for most tropical resources. A new component of this foodways research has come to light from the 2014 field season excavations in the slave/post-Emancipation laborers’ quarters. A large volume of faunal remains was recovered, with an extremely heavy emphasis on mollusks. This is in sharp contrast to the other contexts at Betty’s Hope, and is the beginning of a new facet of understanding pertaining to the slaves and post-emancipation workers that resided at the plantation.